SQL SERVER : Sargable Queries

Today we are going to look at sargable queries. You might ask yourself, what is this weird term sargable. Sargable comes from searchable argument, sometimes also referred as Search ARGument ABLE. What that means is that the query will be able to use an index, a seek will be performed instead of a scan. In general any time you have a function wrapped around a column, an index won’t be used
Some examples that are not sargable

T-SQL
1 2 3	WHERE LEFT(Name,1) = 'S' WHERE Year(SomeDate) = 2012 WHERE OrderID * 3 = 33000

Those three should be rewritten like this in order to become sargable

T-SQL
1 2 3	WHERE Name LIKE 'S%' WHERE SomeDate >= '20120101' AND SomeDate < '20130101' WHERE OrderID = 33000/3

Let’s create a table, insert some data so that we can look at the execution plan
Create this simple table

T-SQL
1	CREATE TABLE Test(SomeID varchar(100))

Let’s insert some data that will start with a letter followed by some digits

T-SQL
1 2 3 4 5 6	INSERT Test SELECT LEFT(v2.type,1) +RIGHT('0000' + CONVERT(varchar(4),v1.number),4) FROM master..spt_values v1 CROSS JOIN (SELECT DISTINCT LEFT(type,1) AS type FROM master..spt_values) v2 WHERE v1.type = 'p'

That insert should have generated 32768 rows
Now create this index on that table

T-SQL
1	CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX cx_test ON Test(SomeID)

Let’s take a look at the execution plan, hit CTRL + M, this will add the execution plan once the query is done running

T-SQL
1 2 3 4 5	SELECT * FROM Test WHERE SomeID LIKE 's%'   SELECT * FROM Test WHERE LEFT(SomeID,1) = 's'

Here is what the plans looks like

As you can see it is 9% versus 91% between the two queries, that is a big difference
Hit CTRL + M again to disable the inclusion of the plan
Run this codeblock, it will give you the plans in a text format

T-SQL
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12	SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT ON GO   SELECT * FROM Test WHERE SomeID LIKE 's%'   SELECT * FROM Test WHERE LEFT(SomeID,1) = 's' GO   SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT OFF GO

Here are the two plans

|–Clustered Index Seek(OBJECT:([master].[dbo].[Test].[cx_test]),
SEEK:([master].[dbo].[Test].[SomeID] >= ‘Rþ’ AND [master].[dbo].[Test].[SomeID] < 'T'),
WHERE:([master].[dbo].[Test].[SomeID] like 's%') ORDERED FORWARD)
|--Clustered Index Scan(OBJECT:([master].[dbo].[Test].[cx_test]),
WHERE:(substring([master].[dbo].[Test].[SomeID],(1),(1))='s'))

As you can see the top one while looking more complicated is actually giving you a seek

Making a case sensitive search sargable

Now let’s take a look at how we can make a case sensitive search sargable as well
In order to do a search and make it case sensitive, you have to have a case sensitive collation, if your table is not created with a case sensitive collation then you can supply it as part of the query
Here is an example to demonstrate what I mean
This is a simple table created without a collation

T-SQL
1 2 3	CREATE TABLE TempCase1 (Val CHAR(1)) INSERT TempCase1 VALUES('A') INSERT TempCase1 VALUES('a')

Running this select statement will return both rows

T-SQL
1 2	SELECT * FROM TempCase1 WHERE Val = 'A'

Val
—–
A
a
Now create the same kind of table but with a case sensitive collation

T-SQL
1 2 3	CREATE TABLE TempCase2 (Val CHAR(1) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS) INSERT TempCase2 VALUES('A') INSERT TempCase2 VALUES('a')

Run the same query

T-SQL
1 2	SELECT * FROM TempCase2 WHERE Val = 'A'

Val
—–
A
As you can see you only get the one row now that matches the case

T-SQL
1 2	SELECT * FROM TempCase1 WHERE Val = 'A' COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS

Val
—–
A
a
Now let’s take a look at how we can make the case sensitive search sargable
First create this table and insert some data

T-SQL
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10	CREATE TABLE TempCase (Val CHAR(1))   INSERT TempCase VALUES('A') INSERT TempCase VALUES('B') INSERT TempCase VALUES('C') INSERT TempCase VALUES('D') INSERT TempCase VALUES('E') INSERT TempCase VALUES('F') INSERT TempCase VALUES('G') INSERT TempCase VALUES('H')

Now we will insert some lowercase characters

T-SQL
1 2	INSERT TempCase SELECT LOWER(Val) FROM TempCase

Now we will create our real table which will have 65536 rows

T-SQL
1	CREATE TABLE CaseSensitiveSearch (Val VARCHAR(50))

We will do a couple of cross joins to generate the data for our queries

T-SQL
1 2 3 4 5 6	INSERT CaseSensitiveSearch SELECT t1.val + t2.val + t3.val + t4.val FROM TempCase t1 CROSS JOIN TempCase t2 CROSS JOIN TempCase t3 CROSS JOIN TempCase t4

Create an index on the table

T-SQL
1	CREATE INDEX IX_SearchVal ON CaseSensitiveSearch(Val)

Just like before, if we run this we will get back the exact value we passed in and also all the upper case and lower case variations

T-SQL
1 2	SELECT * FROM CaseSensitiveSearch WHERE Val = 'ABCD'

Here are the results of that query
Val
—–
AbCd
ABcd
Abcd
ABCd
aBCd
abCd
aBcd
abcd
abCD
aBcD
abcD
aBCD
ABCD
AbCD
ABcD
AbcD
If you add the collation to the query, you will get only what matches your value

T-SQL
1 2	SELECT * FROM CaseSensitiveSearch WHERE Val = 'ABCD' COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS

Here is the result, it maches what was passed in
Val
—
ABCD
The problem with the query above is that it will cause a scan. So what can we do, how can we make it perform better? It is simple combine the two queries
First grab all case sensitive and case insensitive values and then after that filter out the case insensitive values
Here is what that query will look like

T-SQL
1 2 3	SELECT * FROM CaseSensitiveSearch WHERE Val = 'ABCD' COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS AND Val LIKE 'ABCD'

AND Val LIKE ‘ABCD’ will result in a seek, now when it also does the Val = ‘ABCD’ COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS part, it only returns the row that matches your value
If you run both queries, you can look at the plan difference (hit CTRL + M so that the plan is included)

T-SQL
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8	SELECT * FROM CaseSensitiveSearch WHERE Val = 'ABCD' COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS       SELECT * FROM CaseSensitiveSearch WHERE Val = 'ABCD' COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS AND Val LIKE 'ABCD'

Here is the plan

Image reduced in size to fit your browser, click for original size

As you can see, there is a big difference between the two
Here is the plan in text as well

T-SQL
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16	SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT ON GO   SELECT * FROM CaseSensitiveSearch WHERE Val = 'ABCD' COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS       SELECT * FROM CaseSensitiveSearch WHERE Val = 'ABCD' COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CS_AS AND Val LIKE 'ABCD'   GO   SET SHOWPLAN_TEXT OFF GO

|–Table Scan(OBJECT:([tempdb].[dbo].[CaseSensitiveSearch]),
WHERE:(CONVERT_IMPLICIT(varchar(50),[tempdb].[dbo].[CaseSensitiveSearch].[Val],0)=CONVERT(varchar(8000),[@1],0)))
|–Index Seek(OBJECT:([tempdb].[dbo].[CaseSensitiveSearch].[IX_SearchVal]), SEEK:([tempdb].[dbo].[CaseSensitiveSearch].[Val] >= ‘ABCD’
AND [tempdb].[dbo].[CaseSensitiveSearch].[Val] <= 'ABCD'),
WHERE:(CONVERT_IMPLICIT(varchar(50),[tempdb].[dbo].[CaseSensitiveSearch].[Val],0)='ABCD' AND [tempdb].[dbo].[CaseSensitiveSearch].[Val] like 'ABCD') ORDERED FORWARD)